However, when the banner year for something is still only "kinda good," there’s a lot of room for improvement. Mainstream film in particular “continues to lag far behind other forms of media when it comes to LGBTQ+ representation,” Townsend notes. Thankfully, at least based on what we’ve seen so far, 2018 seems up to the challenge. These upcoming movies and TV shows might not be totally perfect, individually or collectively, and a number of them play into the same tired tropes and problematic trends we see time and time again. But there’s still a lot to look forward to…or at least not feel like a total downer about. Here’s what you can expect from this coming year’s crop of mainstream entertainment, from the legitimately cool and good to the stuff you’re only gonna support because you’re worried that if you don’t, Hollywood will stop making queer stuff altogether.

More Than An "Exclusively Gay Moment"

Photo by 20th Century Fox, Temple Hill Productions

Sorry to keep bringing up Beauty and the Beast director Bill Condon’s "exclusively gay moment" comment, but that was such bullshit. Same with all the hype around Thor: Ragnarok and the Power Rangers movie’s purportedly bisexual characters, who were maybe kinda sorta queer-coded at best. Much like Homer Simpson, I like my homosexuals fuh-laaaaaaming, and it looks like 2018’s gonna do a lot better on that front. On TV, we’ve got Nafessa Williams and Chantal Thuy’s queer lady characters on Black Lightning, coming to the CW Jan. 16, and Emily Arlook’s bisexual character on Grown-ish, premiering Jan. 3 on Freeform.

Over on the big screen, we’ve got Freak Show, the film adaptation of James St. James’ YA novel of the same name that stars Alex Lawther as a self-identified "gender obliviator" as well as Laverne Cox in a supporting role. That hits theaters Jan. 12. There’s also gay teen romance Love, Simon, and two — count ‘em, two! — teen dramas about the horrors of gay conversion therapy: The Miseducation of Cameron Post starring Chloë Grace Moretz, premiering Jan. 22 at Sundance, and Boy Erased with Lucas Hedges and Troye Sivan, coming later this year. Anyone else having Armageddon/Deep Impact flashbacks? Antz and A Bug’s Life? Just me?

Gay Characters Who Aren’t Just The Gay Character

As great as movies and TV shows about queer and trans people doing extremely L dot G dot B dot T dot things can be, we are more than just our status disclosures and comings out. Sometimes we shoot toothy alien things in the face with giant guns like Gina Rodriguez’s lesbian character does in Alex Garland’s Annihilation, out Feb. 23. This kind of representation is so important.

Queer and Trans Stories Told by Queer and Trans People

Photo by Meredith Talusan

Not that many people watched Doubt, the legal drama starring Katherine Heigl and Laverne Cox that CBS cancelled two episodes into its first and only season last year. But those who did caught a glimpse of what storytelling can look like when trans women are given the chance to work together on stuff and tell our own stories. (Along with Cox, who was very involved in shaping her character’s storylines throughout the season, the show featured Nevada author Imogen Binnie in the writers' room.) It looks like we’re going to get at least a few more glimpses of that kind of multi-pronged collaboration in 2018. Most notably, there’s Ryan Murphy’s Pose, premiering this summer on FX, which not only features the largest trans cast ever for a scripted series but Surpassing Certainty author Janet Mock and Transparent’s Our Lady J in the writers' room.

Other by us/for us stuff to watch out for: Lena Waithe’s The Chi, coming to Showtime Jan. 7; Tanya Saracho’s Vida, hitting Starz later this year; Ryan Murphy’s American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace, premiering Jan. 17 on FX; and Reina Gossett and Sasha Wortzel’s long-awaited Happy Birthday, Marsha!, a short film that imagines how Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera might have lived their lives in the hours leading up to the Stonewall Riots.

More and Better Opportunities for Trans Actresses

Photo by Sony Pictures Classics

Still from A Fantastic Woman

From Pose and A Fantastic Woman, which opens in New York and Los Angeles Feb. 2 and nationwide later that month, to Dietland, the AMC dark comedy featuring Mya Taylor of Tangerine fame, trans actresses have more and better opportunities than ever before. These "more and better opportunities" are still super few and far between, but like…small victories!

Buncha White People

Hollywood might be giving us more stories about LGBTQ+ characters than ever before, but those LGBTQ+ characters are still disproportionately white, especially when it comes to mainstream films. This dearth of diverse narratives stems from a systematic failure to socially, creatively, and materially support directors and screenwriters of color, as well as a more general failure of imagination that spans the entire industry. “Queer and trans people are part of every community,” says Megan Townsend of GLAAD. “We should be represented in the fullness of all parts of who we are.” Get more queer and trans people of color on both sides of the camera, and maybe we’ll start to see that.

Harron Walker is a freelance journalist based out of New York. Her work has appeared on Vice, BuzzFeed, Teen Vogue, Vulture, Into, Mask, and elsewhere.